If the World Begins
by twobedroomtardis
Summary: Johanna/Gale in little moments. The boy with the snares gets caught in the trap of a girl who is more than just "on fire", and she gets caught in one of his traps. They fall in love and chaos ensues. Rated T for language and references to sex. Re-Edited.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

Once upon a time, Gale Hawthorne fell in love with a girl on fire that had a braid and could shoot an arrow through a squirrel's eye from over 100 yards away. Once upon a time, that girl started a rebellion, and she ran away to hide in an underground District where she realized that she was missing something in her heart.

Once upon a time, the thing that she was missing came back and that thing was a boy who had forgotten about love. And then she reminded him, and some other things happened, but Gale doesn't really care.

Once upon a time, she asked Gale to kill her, but he couldn't, and then the bombs that he thinks he created blew up and the girl with the braid lost her little blonde sister. And now she's living with the boy who has the nightmares and the paintings and the bakery, and she's off loving him and telling him what's real and what's not.

And the boy who she left behind is a vacant shell that fills itself with alcohol and cheap reminders of what used to be.

* * *

><p>Once upon a time, somewhere in the mix of everything, the boy met another girl from a forest who <em>was <em>fire, and she shoved some things out of his heart in order to make room for herself, but the girl with the arrows stayed no matter how hard the girl will the axe pushed.

Once upon a time, the girl with the axe called him gorgeous and understood what it was like to lose absolutely everything because she had lived through it, and the boy ensnared and asked her how to cope.

Once upon a time, Johanna Mason pushed the mockingjay hard enough, and she taught Gale Hawthorne how to fall in love with someone else.


	2. Anna Begins

**Pre/During War**

_This time, when kindness falls like rain, it washes her away, and Anna begins to change her mind. "These seconds when I'm shaking leave me shuddering for days," she says, and I'm not ready for this sort of thing._

* * *

><p>Every time that she listens to the wind blowing shit around, she hears voices: all the people that she's killed and will kill and wants to kill, and then he figures that their cries for help are wasted on someone who has no soul anyway, so she converts her guilt into rage and shoves it in the face of anyone that gets in her way.<p>

* * *

><p>Katniss is gone again and Peeta's with her and so is the Capitol heartthrob who carries a trident and and an elderly woman with eyes like a child, and that girl who pretended to be weak and then killed everyone with her axes. "I'm not like you," the girl with the hard heart whispers, all coldness and broken and fragile, "there's no one left I love." And even though her voice is so steady that she makes it seem like it's an inconvenience, Gale sits in front of the TV and wonders how he's never felt sorry for Johanna Mason.<p>

(Even after all of the poorly veiled 'accidents' released in the papers as tragedies, he never once thought about _sympathy_ for the Victors.)

The time ticks by slowly after that, his heart one slow beat at a time, moving like the hands of the clock that is the Arena, wondering if he'll ever be able to meet this empty girl who's held on such a high pedestal.

* * *

><p>They officially met when he was sent to get the other victors from the Capitol. She insisted that she needed no help while running out of the prison, but by the time she had looked out of the window, she was sobbing. "Help me. Help me, goddammit!" she was shouting over and over, and he remembered his feelings about her from the Quarter Quell.<p>

It was his chance to help her.

"Sh, Johanna, it's okay" he whispered. When she looked up her eyes were empty and he just wanted to fill then with _something_.

* * *

><p>He kept coming back to the hospital for what seemed like a year. She let herself think sometimes, and usually she thought about him. Wouldn't he be immediately notified if Katniss woke up?<p>

Sometimes she even thought that maybe he came to see her; maybe he actually wanted to talk to _her._

Maybe sometimes it was okay to think that somebody cared.

* * *

><p>"I'm sorry I don't have wings like your precious mockingjay." She had told him on one of his visits to their hospital wing while Katniss slept and Johanna had to stay painfully, painfully awake.<p>

"No," he replied. "You don't —"

"Thanks, Hawthorne," she murmured so quietly that he was reminded of how much she had suffered through her life and he realized that maybe she really _did_ care about how people saw her.

"Listen, okay?" He asks gently, and she looks up because no one is really gentle to her anymore. "You don't have wings like Katniss Everdeen. You have wings like Johanna Mason."

* * *

><p>Everybody used to call her Jo —that is, when there was an everybody — and it would always piss her off because she wanted to be seen as a normal girl, not a girl with a boy's name. Not a girly girl with a tough name, and not a tough girl with a girly name. All she had wanted was to be normal.<p>

So that time when they met and Gale pretended not to know her and asked if she went by anything besides Johanna, she almost screamed at him — and then later blame it on her current mental condition, or just the fact that she didn't like the look on his face — but she held back just long enough to hear him whisper to the unconscious girl next to her in the hospital wing, "I'll see you later Katniss," and then, louder, "G'Bye, Anna." She almost smiled.

* * *

><p>They kiss sometimes and mostly she likes it except he's always distracted. He really doesn't dislike it, though, kissing another pair of lips.<p>

And Johanna keeps on fighting the girl on fire for the spot in his heart.

* * *

><p>The Capitol took everything away from Finnick when they took his body and then his Annie, unwillingly gave her back, and then took his life. They took everything away from Annie when they took her sanity by forcing her into the Games and then allowed her love and marriage and a child but killed the baby's father.<p>

They took everything away from Katniss with her little sister and her innocence, and then her mind later on. They took everything away from Peeta when they took his memories of love but left the rest so that he needn't question everything, just his took everything from Gale when they took his home and forced him to become a soldier in a war that he had wanted his whole life without knowing the real consequences.

They took 'everything' from a lot of people, but they always managed to gain some of it back. With Johanna, they just took everything and chopped it up and burned it to the ground.

_Well not this time_, she thinks, and then she pulls Gale closer by the collar of his shirt.

* * *

><p>She wonders if maybe she likes him too much, but she can't seem to stop.<p>

At this point, he's become some sort of sick obsession. At this point, she's waiting for shooting stars in order to make soft-spoken wishes in the nighttime. At this point, all she wants is to find a way to push the mockingjay out of his heart.

Because maybe the world has given up on them, but they can learn how to carry on through all of the broken pieces and scars on their hearts together.

* * *

><p>They kiss again the night before he goes to war. "I'll see you when you get back, Soldier Hawthorne," she says, and he allows a little laugh. "Don't you dare die on me, okay?"<p>

She smiles like it's a joke, but he sees that there's something in her eyes.

_She's not empty, _he thinks. _Mission accomplished._


	3. If the World Gives Up

**Post-War**

_When I hold back, you can push back; gotta bring back the define me, put it all behind 't you see I'm falling for you? Tell me you will believe, if the world gives up on me._

* * *

><p>The thing about Gale and Johanna is that it's always seemed like Gale needs <em>somebody<em> and Johanna needs nobody, but really it's the other way around. See, Johanna's been alone before and it's made her hard and tough and cruel and cynical so if it happened again it would just make her _empty_. And Gale's just been surrounded by people and their _needs_ for so long that sometimes he's okay when he realizes that he's alone.

* * *

><p>He doesn't remember exactly how they met up after the war, but he sees this montage in his head of her on his doorstep, and then her becoming tender and for some reason she's hugging him, and then he sees himself hugging her back.<p>

He doesn't really remember when they started kissing again. Or when it became more than kissing.

All he knows it that somehow these things just_ happened_.

* * *

><p>What he does remember is his proposal.<p>

At first she had blatantly said no, and then he stood up."Look me in the eye and tell me that you don't want to marry me," he had said, desperation seeping into his voice.

She shook her head, determined, and looked him in the eye."I. Can't." she said fiercely.

She was never one to lie, but she was also never the best at keeping the things and people that belonged to her.

"So let's do it then!" he exclaims, and she continues to stare him down.

"No," she repeats, and he sighs and begins to leave.

"Wait," she says slowly, testing the word out for the first time in a long time. "If we get…married," _u__gh, that word_, she thinks, "How do I know that I wont lose you?"

He says, "You'd have to try very, very hard to get rid of me," and she says "Okay," and kisses him before he can process it.

"Yes?" he asks, once she pulls away "You realize that this means that it'll be you and me forever, right?"

And then she nods in such a way that he thinks he's seeing someone else, and she says the one thing that she's always wanted from anyone who could give it to her: "Forever."

* * *

><p>The first spring of freedom was over, the overbearing heat of Summer passed eventually, the fall came fast and ended as quickly, and soon winter came. She cried the whole way through the first blizzard.<p>

"It's like it's _him_, like he's everywhere again, watching us...Gale, it's like he's back again."

And he held her until the snow had long since melted away.

* * *

><p>Gale was never a guy who <em>fucked<em>.

He 'made love' to Madge the first night after he saw the baker's son kiss Katniss, and he wasn't sure exactly _what _he did with that girl from District 13. But that was really it: awkward and sweet with Madge, sloppy and dizzy and overall drunken with the other one.

Johanna was different, as she mostly is with everything.

She made him realize that he was angry and bitter and bottled up, so that first night when she grabbed him by his fancy suit and took off her clothes, he understood the difference between what he was doing then and what he had done with the Mayor's daughter years before.

* * *

><p>Gale meets up with her one day after work to tell her that this isn't a healthy relationship. She nods slowly, but as he turns to walk away, she spins him back around and slaps him across the face. "I'm pregnant, asshole."<p>

"_Oh!_" he yells, and then, lower, he repeats it: "Oh."

And then they just smile.

* * *

><p>He even tried the poetic approach sometimes: "You dont have a soul, you are a soul; you have a body."<p>

But it usually ended like this:"Don't pull that eloquent shit on me."

And then he would get all defensive: "Well it's not mine anyway. I found it in a book."

And usually she would end up beaming, which she's doing much more often these days.

* * *

><p>Tossing and turning was kind of a Katniss thing, and screaming was more of an Annie thing, and Finnick probably used to sit up and start tying knots, and Peeta would be fine if he woke up next to Katniss. But when Johanna had nightmares, he could feel it in his heart.<p>

Her Games and her view of the rebellion were recounted in such vivid detail that when he blinked he saw the blood of her first kill. He saw the water and felt himself drowning and clenched his fists when she mumbled through the part about the electricity.

But in those moments when she would subconsciously walk him straight into the hidden corners of her vulnerability, he didn't once think of her as weak. Because she survived what most could not bear for three minutes; she was strong. And sometimes, going through it all with her, he felt stronger too.

* * *

><p>The one thing that Johanna wants more than anything is for someone to make her <em>forget<em>.

She wants to forget that Finnick called her beautiful once and then fell in love with someone else, she wants to forget that some fancy prick in the Capitol pushed her onto a bed in a hotel and then taught her what people meant when they said men could be _rough_, and she wants to forget that she was pushed on her knees and then bit his dick so hard it bled and everyone she loved died because of it.

And sometimes, when she's collapsed on the bed next to Gale it makes her wonder about how her future with him could just be _right_ instead of remembering where she's gone wrong in the past.

* * *

><p>One time, Gale made Johanna remember her childhood.<p>

He licked her elbow and then giggled like a little schoolgirl. "Is this supposed to be kinky or just fucking weird?" She asked.

"You weren't supposed to feel it!"He exclaims between laughs, and she smiles back because before Gale came along, she couldn't even remember the last time that she wanted to.

* * *

><p>They're both from forests, from the smell of pine needles and peeling bark, from the falling yellow and red leaves to the rare deer and the common squirrel and the turkey that gobble their way past every so often.<p>

Sometimes Johanna leaves their house and sits and watches an innocent baby doe prance by, searching for it's mother, and wonders how Gale could enjoy burning this beautiful tranquility to the ground. It only takes her a moment to understand that he only did what he had to in order to survive.

(It probably would have taken Katniss a lifetime and Johanna knows that part of their whole _thing_ is that he's thankful.)

* * *

><p>One day, when she's almost asleep, Gale tells Johanna that President Snow once left Katniss a rose.<p>

Johanna looks at him with a mixture of shock and pity, and then says flatly, "He sent me a rose once too. And then my little brother got a package with no return address. And when I say package I mean that the box was actually a bomb. Our wonderful president blew up my little brother and the explosion set my parent's house on fire with everyone in it." A tear starts to form and he holds her but she doesn't start crying and she doesn't stop talking and her voice doesn't change or crack. "You know, a package isn't a far cry from a parachute," and then Gale is the first one to cry.

And it's her holding him and he's thinking about Katniss and she knows it and she's crying, but she also knows that Katniss would have chosen Peeta anyway, she just wishes that Gale didn't have to go through everything that he did just for him to realize it.

She's kind of relieved that the bombs weren't his. The Capitol was a vast place full of other expert hunters, other people who knew how their prey thought. But he wasn't back there when the parachutes were dropped: obviously the Capitol was playing mind games with their own citizens, and the old President with the roses and breath like blood was not to be outdone.

They weren't Gale's, though, thats the point. Gale didn't kill the little girl.

And for once, _she's_ the one who's thankful.

* * *

><p>She has a miscarriage on a night when he's out working late. She falls to the floor and cries with her head against the wall. And then Annie calls, and somehow Annie has become her rock (and this is Annie Cresta, the poor mad girl who lost the one she loved and then, when all she wanted to do was forget, Annie had a baby who looks at her with his father's eyes).<p>

"Stand up, Johanna," Annie says sharply. "You're stronger than this and you know it."

But Johanna is sure that Annie knows that she really _isn't _strong enough to handle this. Because this is just another person leaving her, and that's been her whole life. So Annie gets on a train with her mini-Finnick and gets to District 2 before Gale is home.

And by the time that he's home he's heard about it already because Annie's called him and told him so that Johanna didn't have to.

Again, Johanna finds herself being _thankful_.

* * *

><p>There's this life inside of her and that's not just a metaphor because that life is another baby, and she doesn't think that she can handle it. She calls up Annie and tells <em>her <em>before she tells _him_ but maybe that was a mistake because he gets home and he knows. Annie's told him again.

This time there are no slaps, no "Oh"s, and no crazy smiles.

What there _is_ is a reassuring "I won't stay late, I promise. I'll be with you whenever you need me" and another exchange of "Forever"s, and then there's a hug and kiss and a "Goodnight".

* * *

><p>They float along for nine months until Johanna yells at midnight. "MY WATER!" She shouts, but Gale doesn't wake up until she hits him with a pillow. "<em>Let's go, Hawthorne!<em>"

She insists on leaving the hospital after the hours of screaming and exercised breathing. "It's not recommended," they all tell her, but she flips them all off and asks them if _haven't I had enough_? So they let her go.

* * *

><p>"We're so small in the scheme of things," Gale once told her and she had scoffed.<p>

"What scheme? There's no goddamn scheme, Gale, we don't swing on stars. I don't believe in that shit."

"Of course you don't! Do you believe in anything?"

_And this is where it starts,_ he thought, because it usually was.

This time, though, she grows soft and he's reminded that she's been to motherhood and back, and maybe that changes things but he really doesn't care for that whole experience.

"Yeah, I do, Gale. I believe in you, I believe in us, I believe in our new little baby that's sleeping upstairs, and for some strange reason I still believe in miracles."

She smiles but he doesn't really understand, so he calls up Haymitch and asks if Johanna's been getting alcohol from him again.

* * *

><p>Johanna begins to smile more often, and it's a <em>different <em>kind of feeling than she remembers it being, but it's nice.

And Gale's pretty nice too, and also just pretty nice looking, so her life isn't as bad as she thought it would end up being.

Yeah, sometimes Johanna thinks that Gale might have saved her.


	4. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Once upon a time, a boy had a spark in him and a girl had a fire surrounding her.

Once upon a time, Gale Hawthorne played with fire and he got burned.

* * *

><p>That other time, he walked into a burning building and saved a girl who lost everything. And she had fire too, but she was a very different girl than the other one. She had fire spilling from her; it was pouring out of all of the cracks in her heart.<p>

Once upon a time, Gale learned that sometimes it's _okay_ to play with the fire, and so, when she kissed him, he kissed her back, and somewhere along the way they fell in love.

* * *

><p>Once upon a time Johanna was beginning to die inside and the world was giving up on Gale, but it doesn't really seem like that anymore.<p>

Once upon a time, nobody had the right to say that it was a happy ending, because it wouldn't always be happy, and _it wasn't going end_.


End file.
